Dr Mary Flannery – ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions lecture

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions lecture
“Getting Emotional About Shame in Middle English Literature”, Dr Mary Flannery (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

Date: Wednesday 14 August,
Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm
Venue: Woolley Common Room, University of Sydney

All welcome.

A burning blush, a wave of self-loathing, a powerful urge to cringe–all of these are recognizable symptoms of shame. Shame overlaps with and inspires a host of responses and emotions, from anger and annoyance to fear and frustration. This was as much the case in the Middle Ages as it is today; indeed, one scholar has suggested that ‘we might even call shame the primal medieval emotion, so
ubiquitous and various are its implications’. This paper endeavours to unpack some of the emotionality surrounding shame in medieval English literature by focusing on the concepts of
shamefastness and shamelessness, as well as their close involvement in the construction of medieval gender.

——

Mary Flannery is a scholar of medieval literature and cultural history. A maître assistante (lecturer) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, her work focuses on the history of emotion and on fame, gossip, and deviant speech in late-medieval literature and culture (c. 1300-1500). Her first book, John Lydgate and the Poetics of Fame (Boydell & Brewer, 2012), identifies the subject of
fame as key to understanding the poetics of fifteenth-century England’s most important author, arguing that Lydgate conceived of the poet as someone in a unique position to aid his patrons not only by responding to the political pressures of fame, but by generating good fame for his employers and, ultimately, for himself.

University of Queensland Summer Scholars Program at CHED – Call For Applications

The Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland is accepting applications for advanced undergraduate/honours students interested in participating in the UQ Summer Scholars Program for 2013/14.

Details of the program, and how to apply, can be found at the following link:

http://www.ched.uq.edu.au/?page=179087&pid=132264

Successful applicants will receive a weekly stipend in order to work half-time on their own research and half-time as a research assistant for the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED) during a residency of 6-8 weeks. Research areas are identified on the webpage, but we welcome applications from students in a variety of fields – e.g., History, Philosophy, Literature, and Cultural Studies – interested in producing an intellectual history research paper, advised by one of the postdocs or senior researchers currently at CHED.

Closing date for applications: 5pm, Friday August 30, 2012.

Bibliographical Society of America: New Scholars Program – Call For Applications

Each year, the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) invites three scholars in the early stages of their careers to present twenty-minute papers on their current, unpublished research in the field of bibliography as members of a panel at BSA’s Annual Meeting, which takes place in New York City in late January. The New Scholars Program seeks to promote the work of scholars who are new to the field of bibliography, broadly defined.

Those selected for the panel receive $600 toward the cost of attending the Annual Meeting and a complimentary one-year membership in BSA.

For more about the New Scholars Program and application procedures, see:
http://bibsocamer.org/newscholars.htm

The application deadline has been extended to Sept. 15, 2013.

Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe: 1200 to the Present – Call For Papers

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions Collaboratory
Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe: 1200 to the Present
The University of Adelaide
11-12 February

Collaboratory website

Keynote Speakers:

  • Prof. Carol Lansing, University of California, Santa Barbara and Prof.
  • Harvey Whitehouse, University of Oxford

The relationship between emotion, ritual and power has been at the heart of anthropological research for over a century, yet it is only recently that the emotions, rather than the ritual, have moved to the centre of the academic debate. This shift in focus has been motivated both by Renato Rosaldo’s observation that some rituals are designed to manage emotions (such as grief), as much as rituals are designed to create emotion in the participants. Equally, the growth of the field of emotionology has led to greater complexity in the understanding of how emotions work in cultural context. The relationship between ritual and the creation, maintenance and destabilisation of power has not gone unexplored given the centrality of ritual to religious practice and to institutional structures, yet the place emotion plays in the relationship between ritual and power has received less attention, particularly in an historical context. This collaboratory, hosted by CHE Adelaide, will explore the nature of these relationships, seeking to better understand how emotions act within ritual to inform balances of power. We are particularly interested in the ways that rituals and emotions have changed over time, and the ways that rituals, emotions and power have been implicated in processes of change and continuity.

Papers are now sought that address this theme within a European context, or explore European emotions in a global context, between 1200 and the present day. Within the bigger conference theme, papers may wish to explore, but are not limited to:

  • the relationship between rituals and routines and where these cross over
  • where rituals happen – the household, the street, sacred spaces, institutions – and its implications
  • the emotional resonances of objects and texts (including visual culture and architecture) in rituals
  • types of rituals – rites of passage, religious ceremonies, state-sponsored spectacles – and their emotional contexts
  • individual emotions v. collective emotions, and participant v. audience emotions
  • rituals that inform different types of power, including personal, familial, community, institutional and national
  • the interplay of facets of identity, such as gender, class and ethnicity in ritual
  • the dynamics and performance of ritual and how it is informed by emotion or in turn creates emotion
  • rituals and change over time v. rituals as static/traditional
  • and boredom as emotion in ritual contexts

Rituals could include: public and private executions; coronations and state rituals; religious rites (baptism, weddings, confirmation); rituals associated with festivals; food and cleanliness rituals; family rituals, such as household prayers, bedding rituals, and childbirth rituals.

Interdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome.

It is intended that the proceedings of this collaboratory will be published as an edited collection.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words, and a short bio, should be emailed to both Merridee Bailey, (merridee.bailey@adelaide.edu.au,) and Katie Barclay, (katie.barclay@adelaide.edu.au) by the deadline of the 31 August 2013. Questions or queries can also be addressed to the above.

Conflict and Rebellion in the North Sea World – Call For Papers

Conflict and Rebellion in the North Sea World: Creating, Managing and Resolving Conflict in the 12th–13th Centuries
Department of History, University of Glasgow
9-10 April, 2014

Conference website 

From the 8th to the mid-11th century, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Ireland and the Low Countries have been considered as part of a larger North Sea World, linked by trade, culture and conquest. Such comparisons in British scholarship, however, have tended to end at the late 11th Century and the Norman Conquest of England. This conference seeks to extend beyond this traditional frontier by focussing upon the themes of conflict and rebellion in the regions of the North Sea World in the 12th and 13th centuries. The aim will be to help provide fresh perspectives on these subjects by highlighting the contrasts and similarities in conflict creation, management and resolution in different countries.

The conference is a two-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate and early career researchers and will be hosted by the Department of History at the University of Glasgow 9-10 April, 2014.

The keynote speakers will be Professor Matthew Strickland (University of Glasgow) and Professor Sverre Bagge (University of Bergen).

We invite proposals from current postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers in History, and any other relevant subject area, for papers of 20 minutes on the topic of conflict and conflict resolution in the 12th and the 13th centuries ranging geographically from Scandinavia and Iceland to the British Isles and the Low Countries. Abstracts must be 200 words maximum. The proposals must include name, institution, contact information, paper title and abstract.

Possible topics for papers include but are not limited to:

  • Rebellion against the crown
  • Gender in conflict and rebellion
  • The Church and Rebellion
  • Strategies of conflict
  • Conflict resolution
  • Family conflicts
  • Architecture of rebellion (castles and defensive structures)
  • Visual and literary depictions of rebellion and rebels
  • Urban rebellion

Proposals are to be sent to arts-conflictandrebellion@glasgow.ac.uk by Friday 29 November 2013.

Urban Culture and Ideologies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe – Call For Papers

Urban Culture and Ideologies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: c.1100‐1600
Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand
Thursday 30‐Friday 31 January, 2014

This conference will focus on the textual traditions of the urban world: the literature of all kinds produced in the urban context, from chronicles to song, illumination to speech acts. Its main theme is notions of ‘urbanity’. What is ‘urban’ about ‘urban culture’? In what ways did urbanity contribute to cultural and ideological sign systems in political speech, historiography, literature, the visual arts and music? How did the production and reception of chronicles shape urban identity – or identities?

Speakers include:

  • Tracy Adams (University of Auckland)
  • Mark Amsler (University of Auckland)
  • Jan Dumolyn (University of Ghent)
  • Constant Mews (Monash University)
  • James Murray (Western Michigan University)
  • Johan Oosterman (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
  • Kim Phillips (University of Auckland)

If you would like to give a paper, please submit an abstract to Tina Sheehan, t.m.sheehan@massey.ac.nz

Senior scholars and postgraduate students are equally welcome.

If you would like to register attendance at the conference, please do so on the website, http://urbanculture.massey.ac.nz

Abstract submission and early‐bird registration closes 6 December 2013.

If you have any queries please contact: Dr Andrew Brown, School of Humanities, Massey University A.D.Brown@massey.ac.nz

ANZAMEMS member news: Alexandra Barratt

Dear members, Alexandra Barratt (Professor Emeritus at the University of Waikato, NZ) has shared the following report on her research.

Thanks Alexandra!

In 2010 a grant of $73,000 from the ASB Community Trust to the Auckland Library Heritage Trust enabled the Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, to re-catalogue 2000 books printed between 1468 and 1801. In particular, any manuscript waste (for instance wrappers, pastedowns, quire-guards, and spine liners) was noted. M. Manion, Vera F. Vines, and Christopher de Hamel, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (Melbourne, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989), No. 45 (a)-(i), had already listed and partially identified nine binding fragments in the APL, and the new catalogue threw up an additional ten. At about the same time, Professor Alexandra Gillespie of the University of Toronto and I were working on the pre-1650 manuscript bindings in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, some of which also contained manuscript waste, so I was asked to examine and possibly identify the new finds.

This has proved a productive line of research. First, digital photography and the availability of so many Latin texts on-line helped enlarge our knowledge of the known fragments. Five were positively identified: for instance, No. 45 (a), ‘two small vellum strips’, we now know is from Book One of the ‘Ethica Nova’ or Translatio Antiquior of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and No. 45 (i), ‘Manuscript on plants’, from pseudo-Aristotle, Secreta Secretorum, translated by Philip Tripolitanus, Pars 3, Cap. 3 and Caps 7-8. In addition, No. 45 (b) (i) was tentatively re-identified as from a Psalter rather than a Missal, and more information gleaned about the remaining three. Of the new fragments, the most exciting were quire-guards cut from an early Carolingian Bible (c. 800AD), in three of the four volumes of a glossed Latin bible printed at Strasbourg by Adolf Rusch for Anton Koberger, c.1480, and which belonged to the Benedictine monastery of Benedictbeuern (see my blog post for 26 June 2013, http://medievalbookbindings.com). These match larger fragments held at the Bayerischestaatsbibliothek, Munich, and are probably from the women’s house of Köchel. In addition, fragments in a further five volumes were positively identified and some information acquired about a sixth, a leaf bound at the back of Priscian, Libri omnes, Basel, 1554, which is clearly from a homiliary but so far eludes precise identification. Fragments in three more volumes were too fragmentary to identify. As a bonus, the search threw up some printed binders’ waste, including a paper sheet of early 16th century papal indulgences, unfortunately past their expiry date.

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions: Interpreting Historical Medical Texts – One-Day Study Day

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar: Interpreting Historical Medical Texts

Date: 24 September 2013,
Time: 8.45am – 5pm
Venue: Seminar Room 218, Fisher Library, University of Sydney

Instructors:

  • Assoc Prof Daniel Anlezark (Sydney)
  • Dr Judith Bonzol (Sydney)
  • Dr Rhodri Lewis (Oxford)
  • Dr Ursula Potter (Sydney, CHE)
  • Dr Anik Waldow (Sydney, CHE) 

Disease and psychological afflictions are not simply medical issues but have always had repercussions throughout social, cultural, political, religious, and intellectual spheres. This Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar is designed to help students develop skills at placing medieval and early modern medical texts within these broader contexts. For details on set texts and application forms visit: historyofemotions.org.au/events.

A small number of bursaries of up to $500 are available for students from outside of the Sydney area. For more information please contact Gabriel Watts.

Women, Scholarship and Collective Action: A Roundtable – Call For Papers

The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship/The Gender and Medieval Studies Group at Leeds 2014

Women, Scholarship and Collective Action: A Roundtable

This proposed roundtable event follows on from this July’s highly successful SMFS/GMS-sponsored roundtable discussion (‘Gender, Posts, Positions, Pay and Promotion’) at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2013, which concluded by positing a continued need for collective action by women academics as a countermeasure to the type of institutionalised sexism still experienced by many women in the profession. The 2014 roundtable, therefore, will focus on what we mean by ‘collective action’ and the ways in which it can be established and promoted to support women working within the academic environment. As usual, it will focus on both experiential and theoretical approaches, examining the ways in which women’s collaboration and cooperation within academic contexts carry the potential to form a whole much greater than the sum of the parts. It will also debate how collaborative action can effect mutual support as women help each other to succeed, progress and ultimately dismantle the glass-ceiling that the 2013 roundtable identified as still clearly operating within the profession.

Contributions for 5-7 minute papers are sought from academics from all levels of the profession, particularly from those who have experience of collective/collaborative /cooperative actions devised specifically for the promotion of gender equality. Inquiries and/or offers to contribute should be sent to Liz Herbert McAvoy (e.mcavoy@swan.ac.uk) by September 15, 2014.

Medieval Romance in Britain – Call For Papers

Medieval Romance in Britain
Clifton Hill House, University of Bristol
12-14 April, 2014

Papers are invited on all aspects of medieval romance. The conference marks the conclusion of an AHRC-sponsored research project on the verse forms of Middle English Romance, and papers that address questions of verse form are particularly welcome.

To propose a paper, please send a brief abstract to one of the conference organizers, before 31 September 2013: Dr Judith Jefferson: j.jefferson@bristol.ac.uk>, Professor Ad Putter: a.d.putter@bristol.ac.uk

Further information about the conference will be made available at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medievalcentre/events/conferences